Hmm... I really have used Free and OpenBSDs so far, but I do want to try out NetBSD and DragonFly BSD as well if I do get this laptop.

My main concern is that if its network port will work or not... I don't plan to use its wireless, just CAT5 to my main machine... I really only want this for experimental stuff, but would like it to at least with the Internet.

From that page, Audio should be fine.. OpenBSD supports the AD1981A AC 97' codec, the rest of the page lacks any *detailed* information about the system.

Digging around leads me to believe it might use a BroadCom chipset for the wired Ethernet.... but that's all I can find.

Unless someone owns that exact system, (possibly a different revision/model), you won't find a definitive answer... the only "absolute" way of knowing if it's supported is to boot OpenBSD and see if everything is detected.

Intel's been pretty pissy with their drivers (unable to distinguish 'releasing specs for open source' and 'just writing a linux driver') so the wifi might give you a problem depending on the chip. Given the "supports a maximum of 1GB" I'm guessing this is old enough to not use the 4965agn chipset, so there's a chance it's still using the iwi driver which has come along pretty well in FreeBSD 7.

If the latest X is freaking out on the video card (also intel), you might want to uninstall the xf86-video-i810 (in ports) and install xf86-video-intel.

Or it could all be completely fine right out of the box. When the specs in the link are just generically "intel" it's a guess as to what specific chipsets are up on it. This looks like a laptop that FreeBSD will take to nicely though.

I got myself an old T42 and have it smoothly running with FBSD 7 out of the box.
My ethernet uses the em driver which is supported by the Kernel. Wireless with WPA wasn't a ploblem as well. The wireless intel chipsets are supported by the kernel, just load the modules.

FreeBSD 6.3 runs fine on my T41, although suspend/resume are broken with the current xorg drivers - regardless of whether DRM/DRI is enabled or not. According to some other people this is fixed for FreeBSD 7.0, but a short look on it some month ago was disappointing since my Atheros 5212 (replacement for the standard intel wifi) refused to work.

the rest of the page lacks any *detailed* information about the system.

Yea I know I was trying to google and search their web page... it is pretty frustrating.

Quote:

Digging around leads me to believe it might use a BroadCom chipset for the wired Ethernet.... but that's all I can find.

Unless someone owns that exact system, (possibly a different revision/model), you won't find a definitive answer... the only "absolute" way of knowing if it's supported is to boot OpenBSD and see if everything is detected.